Reincarnation and multiple lives - if you believe this what does it mean

[Pleasekeepmycoffeehot]

Just for fun really, as I don't believe in reincarnation. The idea of it is so fucking tiring! When I'm dead I want peace and quiet and a rest the thoughts of starting the whole thing again is quite draining...

But, if you have an interest in this stuff, what do our hardships mean in the present life? Is it all something to do with karma and about lessons we need to learn this time round?

Is it like - we start off with 'easy' lives to begin with, and build our experience, and our lives get progressively harder until we reach enlightenment?

Or the opposite! Do we start off with 'harder' lives - and then they get easier the more we work our way through multiple lives? Kind of like a career pathway where you get really experienced and do more challenging things later on lol. And get to enlightenment that way?

And then is there something about karma biting us on the ass/ bad stuff happening as punishment in this life for stuff we fucked up last time round? Hmmm, that seems a bit victim-blamey.

What way does it work? Who has read about this or has any thoughts?

Do you think people who are very empathetic have lived through many lives before and can therefore empathise with different human conditions?

That's a good point - I hadn't thought of it like that before! I do believe in reincarnation mainly because I don't want to believe a being as complex as a human can just stop existing. We are so much more than blood and emotions - I don't want to believe a soul ever dies and it gives me comfort to think this. I don't think we are 'supposed' to remember past lives but the memories are there until our brains become too cluttered with this life stuff but I'm not going to say I'm right and you're wrong to anyone!

My DS between the ages of 2 and 5 related in great detail his life when he was 'big', life with his grandparents, his drowning(s), food he ate, his grandparents bicycles, their clothes, their faces. He was very attached to his grandfather and sobbed several times because he missed him . We were careful never to put words in his mouth or ideas in his head or to encourage elaboration. The words he said were quite matter of fact and there was no way he could have got any of the descriptions from photographs or endless watching of Thomas the Tank engine videos.

I used to be terrified of no longer existing, went through a real existential crisis recently. Perhaps there's more after death but I think consciousness happens in the brain. It's almost a comfort to think it ends one day, even though I'm happy in this life. Many beliefs like reincarnation stem from a fear of the unknown and fear of no longer existing. But then I'm just another person so I have no clue really!

I hope not. I want to die, be gone and know nothing about it. If I do come back though I'd like to be my cat.

I believe in reincarnation. I’m not a big follower of Eastern philosophy so can’t really answer your questions about Karma etc.

I believe we contain an energy/soul which is part of the divine. The purpose of creation and therefore out purpose within time and space is to experience being. Something that is everything cannot experience itself, each of our souls has a purpose to fulfil within that need to experience. It’s not about becoming objectively perfect. It’s about finding our true purpose - once we have fulfilled that purpose or will then we will return to the source. We all have different purpose to enable the source to experience every aspect of itself. Part of the journey is finding out what that purpose is and fulfilling it.

IME “past life regression” should be done by the individual being guided into the right alternative state of consciousness and discovering their own past life rather than someone else telling them what it is.,

whether this is indeed past lives is of course open to debate but it’s largely irrelevant

it could be reliving a past life

it could be recognition of a life you’re living simultaneously

it could be your imagination creating a back story to understand something in the present

I really hope people like Richard Dawkins are right. I hope that death is the end. Life has its good bits, but it’s mostly suffering. Frankly, there are times when I feel guilty for bringing a child into the world. I certainly wouldn’t want to live my life over again, and reincarnation is just about the worst thing I can imagine.

Some people cannot bear the thought eternal nothingness. I mean the thought that you could be walking along the street then bang, a car hits you, and its instant nothingness forever. I’m terrified of dying (I mean the hideous process - the death rattle, the struggle for breath, etc), but the thought of not existing at all makes me happy. Some people find it unbearable. For me it’s a comfort. If we just disappeared, instantly and painlessly, at 85 - like a hologram that is switched off - I’d never worry about anything again.

When you undergo regression therapy, I suspect you re-live the experiences of your ancestors rather than something you went through yourself. I’ve got a feeling we somehow inherit our ancestor’s memories. Maybe they are stored in the DNA somehow. Jung called it the collective unconscious. But the idea of an individual soul - some solid, persistent thing that is reincarnated - no, that seems unlikely. We aren’t made of anything that persists. We’re a collection of atoms and cells and bacteria, which is constantly being replaced. You’re not even made of the same cells and atoms and bacteria as you were 30 years ago.

It astonishes me that people find comfort in the idea of reincarnation. Do they never watch the news? Think of the horrific things that could happen in your future life. The possibilities are limitless. Just read a history book ffs! Give me eternal nothingness any day.

If we’re just a collection of atoms that are constantly being replaced, am I still me or someone totally different so the me that existed 30 years ago no longer exists

@OMG12 maybe you are someone else than you were 30 years, but it doesn't really matter as you would be none the wiser anyway.

Also, when did souls appear? Do dinosaurs reincarnate? How can we define what has a soul and what doesn't? What set point in time did we become supernatural beings?

It would make more sense rather than one lifetime.

You're very wrong.

For me the comfort lies in the thought that there might be something operating on a higher consciousness to ourselves.
After all, people find comfort in Christianity - and that belief involves eternal hell and damnation!

This documentary might be of interest to people on this thread, if you haven't seen it already. It's quite old now, but it's about a young boy who had very detailed recollections (names, incidents) of a past life on the Isle of Barra, which researchers on the programme then investigated.

Kids come out with all kinds of nonsense. My 2 year old says he used to be a grown up. I don't think he's been reincarnated because of this. They just talk about anything.

Well that would cause quite a few issues. For example could I just walk away from a marriage after 30 years because I was literally not the person that married DH. I’m not talking divorce, I’m talking it never happened. Would any rights under a contract disappear after 30 years, would I lose ownership to my house after 30 years? Now I can remember things from more than 30!years ago, what impact does that have?

Who knows but i think i believe there could be, ever since i have had memories,i guess from 3? I see regularly the same dream that jerks me awake, i am a young woman late teens early 20s and dont look like me right now,the dream is about me walking on the riverside slipping falling into the river and drowning. I regonized the place it happened in my dreams again when i was little and refused to walk over the bridge near there,my mum never understood why i lost it there and i was too little to tell her. I have always had a fear or deep water as well i never let water get above my bellybutton.

Well there’s lots of theories. But I would say souls are eternal as divine sparks. Who has a soul? Well I would think only divine man. But I think animals are prob close enough to god to not require a separate soul.

It's very interesting, but the truth is that no one actually knows. People believe in this or that but they can't know for certain.
I always think of the insects. They live on the same planet as we do, and presumably they are unaware of human life. They are not equipped to understand it.

So, might there be other beings on the planet that we are equally unequipped to detect. (Or am I talking out of my nether regions!)

Wonderful thread, @Pleasekeepmycoffeehot thanks. No arguing yet either! Mind, we're only on page 4..
@Wooooooo @KarmaStar @crochetcrazy1978 particularly liked your posts.

@BertieBotts Your mum is spot on! :-)

My Grandad was in the ww2 in India & Burma, he came back knowing about reincarnation.

One day when he had dementia he said if he didn't end up in hell he wanted to be reincarnated.

He would get slightly mixed up in religions and often recited bits of the valley of the shadow of death psalm that he'd learnt as a soldier, I had that read out at his funeral.
He also said that all soldiers find religion when the bullets start to fly.

Being a soldier in the war was actually the best part of his life so I think he'd have wanted to get reincarnated as a soldier again.

Such an interesting thread.
I think there is something in genetic memories, and maybe that's how 'past lives' come through in regression.
For those people that believe - what are your thoughts on animals, non humans, is it the same? Is a dog a dog each time?

Proof of Heaven

Dr Eben Alexander

Read it

I believe in

The life review

The choosing of coming

Source energy in which we're all still part of

Anyone here like Abraham Hicks or has read Seth Speaks?

... probably not